Ride. Write.

I’ve experienced the arctic chill of a cold look. The pyroclastic shiver of cold, hard cash sliding between the seams of my jeans pockets. I’ve heard tell of folks with cold, dead hearts, frozen to all including the docile faces of puppies. But lemme tell you this. There ain’t nothin’ colder in this world than chamois cream applied to the nethers at 30 something degrees Fahrenheit. Now that. That is too much information. The little girly squeal in that moment. The face all clenched and wincey. But this is the mountains girl, and in the mountains you’ve to be all …

The donut is stale. I eat it anyway. After last night’s too-lazy-to-schelp-out-for-food state, I can’t help but stuff it in my willing gob and masticate the shit out of it. My lips are no doubt dusted by its powdery spell. My brain, numbed by the action of blindly chewing. Picking up a plastic spoon I shovel in, with slow, methodical patience, Cheerio payloads and ignore the milk dribbling down my chin. The bowl is made from foam. The table, laminate. I watch with half-baked interest, the weather report flashing on a TV, set heavy and high in the corner of …

Meat tearing and re-tearing. The gnaw and groan of muscle and gristle as it fights against the protesting crank. The uphill. Actual uphill – not the slow, lazy yawn of Kansas to this very point – works against the motion like an irritating grain of sand in an oyster. No pearls in these legs. No hidden treasures to be ripped from femur bones. And yet, and yet. Why? Why do my legs hurt? I’ve just had two glorious days of doing nothing but eating, and drinking, and lying around on the couch while pretending to be an aunt to three …

I don’t believe in signs. STOP signs, sure. They’re not wired to lie, set – as they are – in intersectional domination at the corner of ‘oh crapsticks!’, and ‘this is gonna hurt’. Hand on Santa’s grab bag, I believe in STOP signs. No, I’m talking about those mumbo-jumbo signs that futures are cooked up over and fancy stories about equine giddyuppers, of which there are four, are hatched about. Signs of things to come. Events yet to occur. Hints at our destiny and coy, creepy winks to our unknown futures. “She shoulda seen the signs,” they’ll say, looking back …

White jawed and invisible whiskered, I watch him watching me watch him and gently continue my pedal towards his mark. In the crisp morning, the horizon has an endless girth. From eye-corner to eye-corner. Flat, featureless and unbroken. The road slices through its gut, focusing my gaze on the task ahead. That task being to simply put what I see in front, behind. The road. An unrelenting forward force. Black, cracked, and with the promise of escape laid upon its stubborn shoulders. It’s a mesmerizing presence. Needless to say, anything that suddenly appears on it is like a streaker at …

This is pure friendo country. Sparse. Vacant. Moody. The wind shimmies through the grass, getting busy in that Hawaiian skirt way, and there I am. I fly fly fly along the skillet flat earth. In the silence only Kansas can provide. It’s not flat, of course. It tilts ever so slightly, pouring everything Eastward. I am headed west. Against the grain, against the script, and against the wind. So take a look at me now. Empty space. All odds. Hazzah! Once again, I’m having an endless conversation with myself, wherein I repeat the same line, or variations on it, over …